Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to present and apply an analytical framework to study the relationship between science, technology, and politics in international cooperation processes. An interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework is elaborated, with an analytical focus on the complexity of the process captured by the notion of “socio-technical”. Allowing for a broad understanding, the model is based on a combination of concepts from different fields of social science, particularly International Relations Theory and the Social Studies of Technology. To understand how international cooperation comes about, two dimensions are identified: (a) the of technologies, both at the international and national level; (b) the dynamics of interaction between human and non-human elements (research teams, technologies, governmental institutions, forms, texts, etc.) explained as different configurations of techno-political-economic networks. This framework is applied to the analysis of a cooperation case between Argentina and Germany in the field of Information and Communication Technologies during the 1990s (A more complete description and analysis of this case was developed in Kern 2008). This case study serves to shed light on relevant features of cooperation between developed and developing countries.
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Notes
- 1.
“Sources of explanation” is taken here from Buzan and Little (2000).
- 2.
- 3.
“Politicization” is closely related to the interplay between “scientific policy” and “politics of science” (Elzinaga and Jamison 1995). Herrera (1995) also explores the relation between power, politics, and science in Latin America and his work is also relevant to understand the idea of politicization applied here.
- 4.
Cox defines an historical structure as a “…particular combination of thought patterns, material conditions and human institutions that have some coherence between its elements” (Cox 1986: 141).
- 5.
In the Information Technology field, a “framework” can be defined as a support structure that organizes various elements of software and over which different applications can be programmed. These structures are implemented as programs containing some actions that specific applications do not need to reproduce.
- 6.
This concept was clearly expressed in the Human Development Reports and the works of Amartya Sen (1999).
- 7.
This research issue was driven by the appearance of Amazon on the Internet. Buying on Amazon was a business process that the LIFIA team wanted to emulate explicitly in their design method. This aim was part of a wider research agenda regarding hypermedia design.
- 8.
This consensus was based on the idea that software must be designed by programming independent and re-usable “objects”. Embodied in the innovation discourse, this idea was oriented towards a more efficient process for software development.
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Kern, A.S., Thomas, H.E. (2014). The Socio-Technical Construction of Technology in German-Argentine ICT Cooperation. In: Mayer, M., Carpes, M., Knoblich, R. (eds) The Global Politics of Science and Technology - Vol. 2. Global Power Shift. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55010-2_7
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